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Tournament Test Game -Eldar

Alright, so here is my perspective on how our test game played out. For reference, this is the Ulthwé list that I played, while here are Severus’ Orks.

Pre-game I decided to have my Farseer as my warlord, in case I needed to designate my Autarch for a suicide-mission later on, or challenge a character. My Farseer began the game with Guide, Executioner, Doom, and Eldritch Storm. My warlock had Conceal and Protect. As it turns out Doom was very effective in this game, as was Guide. Eldrich Storm killed perhaps 10 orks, and Executioner slew 2; lending weight to our Primarch’s view that witchfire powers are rather underwhelming.

I knew from the beginning that the Battle-Wagon would be very hard for me to destroy, because of my lack of long range anti-tank, and Severus’ wise decision to surround it with boys, preventing me from teleporting behind it. Two of his three giant mobs also had feel no pain, meaning that they would absorb a lot of firepower, and the third was mostly in cover.

Aside from good power rolls, I was also lucky to win the deployment roll, have it not be night fighting, and for Severus to not steal the initiative. I decided to concentrate my fire and take down one mob at a time. Doom was key in this, because it essentially affected my entire army each turn. Sure I was wounding on 2s anyway, but there ended up being a great many 1s!

Despite having Feel No Pain, I think we were both amazed that my first turn of shooting managed to kill 30 boys, leaving mad dok alone, with two wounds left, and giving me first blood. My second turn saw the arrival of all of my reserves, thanks to my Autarch ( I rolled two 2s). One squad of spiders materialized 9″ away from mad doc (direct hit), while the other took advantage of my warlord’s trait and also did not scatter.

However, I did make several tactical errors this turn. First, I moved my walkers into the open in an effort to wipe out Doc’s new mob of 30 boyz. Despite causing an impressive 20 wounds, only 5 models were removed as casualties! In retaliation, Severus’ Lootaz completely annihilated them; scoring about 5 penetrating hits and 4 glances. I also forgot my psychic phase…twice…

Next, I miscalculated how far the spiders were from the nearest boyz. I only rolled a 2 for my battle-focus run (that fleet turned into a 3), which was not enough to allow them to fire their weapons. Finally, I completely forgot about the Waaagh rule, and moved my jetbikes and spiders too close!

Lucky for me, Ghazghul’s unit rolled a 2 for their run move, which made a charge against my warlord all but impossible (needing a 12). By turn 3 I was down both squads of spiders as well as the war walkers. Even so, the damage had been done, and I was able to eliminate the last mob in the next two rounds of shooting. After that it was just a question of mopping-up and claiming the objectives.

The final score was 12-0. Considering how badly it went for the Orks, in spite of some truly amazing saving rolls, I can only conclude that this was a very rough match-up for Severus’ list. I think that going first made a huge difference, as it allowed me to eliminate a third of Severus’ infantry before he could do anything. Even so, I don’t think that it would have changed the outcome. The orks were still too slow and the lootaz, while amazing, did not provide enough fire power to truly threaten me.